Negotiating Disaster and Apprehension: Representing Chernobyl

The one-time Palace of Culture lords over the remains of Pripyat (image courtesy Timm Suess).

Few disasters have more persistently tugged at our collective imagination than the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident. In the subsequent quarter-century, a flood of statistical analysis has dissected the concrete effects of the accident on regional mortality, radiation levels, and the Ukranian and regional economies, and other scholars have assessed the quantifiable impacts on mental health. Yet little of this scholarship has painted a particularly satisfying picture of what in many ways is a socially imagined disaster as well as a real, measurable catastrophe that cannot be completely rationalized through scientific analysis. Mario Petrucci has argued that “the quantification of Chernobyl and its after-effects, crucial as it is, can never become our sole aim. Chernobyl stands to remind us that knowledge is as much qualitative as quantitative.” The thousands of people neighboring Chernobyl and in the shadow of the vast radiation cloud are joined by countless more people well outside the Ukraine in their common apprehension of the specter of unseen radiation, a widespread wariness of a state or states that intentionally misrepresented the crisis, and a fascination with the psychological, bodily, and material effects of disaster.

In the wake of the disaster, a 30 kilometer “exclusion zone” was created around Chernobyl expelling all residents and leaving behind an abandonment space that often has been symbolically cast as a testament to the resilience of nature, the fatal flaws of the Soviet state, the fallibility of expert knowledge, and the aesthetics of loss, fear, and suffering. Much of the exclusion zone is occupied by the former “nuclear city” of Pripyat, which was settled in 1970 to house Chernobyl laborers before its roughly 49,000 residents were removed in two days following the 1986 disaster. The slowly eroding city has been a magnet for a variety of observers aspiring to make sense of the Chernobyl disaster, with some former residents hoping to turn it into a protected living museum revealing technological catastrophe; other artists document Pripyat aesthetically by assessing post-abandonment graffiti and even placing a mural of The Simpsons in the heart of the exclusion zone; some observers monitor nature’s rebound in the exclusion zone; Timm Suess’ wonderful page on Chernobyl includes sounds, videos, and many images; and many more chronicle their trips into the exclusion zone, which tours enter on a regular basis (though there are some moves to restrict such tours). Today a wealth of photographers have descended on the abandoned city and remaining exclusion zone, capturing our fascination with the ruins of a disaster that has seized many peoples’ imaginations.

The Pripyat ferris wheel looms over the landscape of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (image courtesy hiroshiman)

Some imaginations of the Chernobyl exclusion zone paint it as a dead space populated by barren Soviet-era concrete structures. For instance, Pripyat has appeared in the games S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, in which a variety of mutants and mercenaries aspire to kill players as they move through the post-apocalyptic landscape, and the visually memorable Pripyat ferris wheel occupies the game’s landscape (one tour company even offered S.T.A.L.K.E.R. tours of Pripyat and the exclusion zone). Pripyat also appears in several versions of the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Some artists take their visual cues from such post-apocalyptic video art conventions, which pose a bleak landscape of mutants and dystopian creatures—these creatures essentially represent radiation, which is an otherwise difficult entity to represent artistically and materially—and places them in confrontation with powerful human agents.

The Pripyat ferris wheel rusts in the background as flowers push through the surface (image courtesy ssmarta)

Much of this art from video games to photography aspires to imagine an effective human presence where it otherwise does not exist today. Artists’ conceptualizations of the space illuminate the most powerful evocative dimensions of the abandoned landscape—mountains of gas masks, empty nursery cribs, Soviet ideological symbols, the empty Pripyat amusement park—to underscore the absence of people while lamenting the lost social life in an empty traumascape. Artists sometimes risk inflating the scarred and barren exclusion zone left in the wake of the radiation cloud, but overdone depictions of the post-apocalyptic exclusion zone are simply aspiring to evoke the distinctive ruins of instant abandonment in the face of human and state failures.

The Hotel Polissya in Pripyat (image courtesy Timm Suess).

In reality, security around the zone is relatively lax, wildlife has thrived in what Mary Mycio describes as Europe’s largest wildlife sanctuary (compare the Wired piece on wildlife in the exclusion zone); organized tours have been visiting the zone for at least a decade; and some squatters have moved into the area or are among the 3500 people living in Chernobyl working for the state managing the disaster site. Nevertheless, Chernobyl and Pripyat are clearly declining in the absence of maintenance and under the persistent threat of thieves pilfering anything that can be sold. Urban explorers often point to Chernobyl as one of the world’s most compelling sites, representing what Bradley Garrett refers to as a “post-human imaginary”; that is, the most alluring ruins are those that are intersections of history and a “post-human future imagination” that envisions a world without us. Paul Dobraszczyk paints Chernobyl as an “umediated experience on the ruin of the city” where we can confront “inconceivable terror.” The explorer UrbanX, for instance, has documented a series of visits into the exclusion zone with exceptional rigor. These explorers’ forays into the exclusion zone reveal our somewhat dystopian anxieties about our contemporary loss of place. Photographer Timm Suess argues that Chernobyl provides a “post-mortem” picture, echoing a common characterization of abandonment photographers as chroniclers of architectural “death,” but Suess suggests that Chernobyl is distinctive in the nearly instant abandonment of the site and its quarter-century isolation.

image courtesy Pedro Moura Pinheiro

Signs in the Pripyat Palace of Culture (image courtesy Timm Suess).

All of these mediums aspire to represent Chernobyl artistically and express our anxieties, fascination, and curiosities with the disaster. Mario Petrucci concludes that an artist’s perspective on Chernobyl tempers the scientifically driven bureaucratic efforts to manage the aftermath of the disaster. He advocates an artistic imagination of the Chernobyl apprehension, anxiety, and suffering, suggesting that “In understanding Chernobyl, intellect can therefore only ever provide one tool. … I believe it a fundamental truth of our species that suffering – and a genuine empathy with suffering – serves to reorient us in a better direction. Chernobyl is far more than a scientific mistake or a folly of Soviet zeitgeist; more, too, than yet another increment in our capacity to generate tragedy and environmental stress. On some plane – one that is more instinctive, and felt, than arcane – exists the chance to transform Chernobyl from wound to opportunity, to move from scientific progress measured scientifically to human progress whose values are rooted firmly in compassion.”

An abandoned nursery in Pripyat (image courtesy murderdoll17).

Our fascination with Chernobyl has complex roots, but much of it revolves around how we view the state and scientific authority and experience apprehension and anxiety. Adriana Petryna weaves a compelling ethnographic case arguing that the models of “scientific knowability” that aspire to assess and politically manage the toll of Chernobyl simply fail to capture human suffering and apprehension. Ulrich Beck made a similar case when he referred to Chernobyl as a moment of “anthropological shock” in its illumination of the divide between scientific knowledge and the human experience of suffering and risk. In this shock, science fails to address the depth of our apprehension, and it evades our anxieties that even post-Soviet states will not always protect their own citizens. Scientists have waded into the exclusion zone hoping to systematically document nature’s response to the disaster, but photographers may paint a more satisfying—if utterly emotional–image of floral and faunal rebound than tables of data analyses.

Chernobyl reactor today (image courtesy jon|k).

In the most creative hands, such art should lead to genuine activism and not simply be a voyeuristic gaze on distant Eastern Europeans. Krista Harper has argued that the Chernobyl disaster moved some Hungarians (which borders the Ukraine) to openly question scientific and state authority and fashion communities of shared anxiety that fueled environmental activism. Phaedra Pezzullo argues that “toxic tours” to places like the Chernobyl exclusion zone are fueled by a commitment to social justice intended to foster concrete activism against environmental pollution catastrophes. For most of us, the discussion about Chernobyl simply will not occur without photographers, artists, cinematographers, poets, and novelists willing to tackle Chernobyl as something more complicated than a nuclear accident, instead framing it as a discourse on deep-seated apprehensions of an apocalypse we fear we may create ourselves.

1995 The ‘‘Cultural Fallout’’ of Chernobyl Radiation in Norwegian Sami Regions: Implications for Children. In Children and the Politics of Culture, ed. Sharon Stephens. Princeton University Press, Princeton University Press.

Very thought provoking – as ever – it’s great to see academics speaking through open access outlets, rather than saving their thoughts for minority access journals (or maybe you do save your even better stuff for those !?). If anyone reading this is based in the north of England they might be interested in the workshop being held at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester on 28 November on the theme of Chernobyl, contamination and the art of ruin. I don’t know if there any spaces left but here’s a link to more info: http://ragpickinghistory.co.uk/2012/10/17/study-seminar-on-ruins-whitworth-art-gallery-manchester/

That workshop sounds fabulous, very interesting folks and clear parallels to questions archaeologists are discussing as well, there obviously are lots of scholars and artists coming at this from a variety of disciplines (and tons of popular interest outside the academy). I will get lots of this material in peer-reviewed publications and conferences, but this is a nice way to float new ideas.

What a terrible thing to happen. Yet the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were far worse. I still can’t believe that after all these nuclear disasters the world leaders are still in the arms development stage. Yes, I know everyone wants to protect their own, but if you think about it, nuclear bombs aren’t really the correct way to do it, because a nuclear bomb would affect everyone, including the man and people whopush the button.

Thanks for this essay, the images, and the tremendous collection of sites and resources about this theme. I plan to use some of the images and ideas in a presentation I will be giving at a labor history conference ar Wayne State University in Detroit in October, titled “The Planetary Work Machine: Perils and Prospects” (the latter category questionable to say the least). It will be a historical description of global industrialism, influenced by Lewis Mumford’s idea of the megamachine. Your images give a good idea of both perils and prospects.I will definitely mention this site and your insights. Detroit is of course the infamous city of ruins–the iconic abandoned train station here was used by Godfrey Reggio for his opening in Naqoyqatsi, the third of his trilogy of films starting with Koyaanisqatsi, the “life out of balance” we are more and more seeing the consequences of. Back in 1977 I was in a group that published, on the cover of our local radical newspaper, a picture of the downtown Detroit skyline with the title, “Soon to be picturesque ruins!” We had no idea how far this was going to go (though Detroit was already in ruins at the time). (I would send the image to you but not sure how to do it.) RE the prospects, reading your blog I appreciate your take, and think I can talk about the uses of ruins to inspire ecological activism, as you point out at the end of your essay. All best.

About me

I am a historical archaeologist who studies consumer culture, focusing on material consumption and the color line and the relationship between popular culture and contemporary materiality. I am Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI); Docent in Historical Archaeology at the University of Oulu (Finland); Past-President of the Society for Historical Archaeology (2012-2013); and a cycling geek.